^ Adoption! Even easier is adopting from a visibly different ethnicity so they'd likely just figure out on their own they're adopted! That's my plan!!!

But seriously. I enjoy the heck out of it, so why not? And I do think it has its benefits (I hated reading as a kid, games encouraged me to do so...well, y'know, back when games didn't just read all the dialogue to you). Perhaps just having it in the house will pique the kid's interest, and there are far worse hobbies to take up (I'd still encourage other activities as well, reading or playing an instrument). I've always found games as pleasant time wasters, the things that aleviate every having to start a conversation with "I'm booored".

Time spent engaging kids is time well spent I think. Whether it is reading books together or playing video games or throwing a baseball around, I have a hard time believing that type of interaction can ever be a bad thing.

EDIT: The flipside of this is that pawning kids off probably has degrees of bad. "Go do your homework and don't bother me" is not optimal, however "go play Candy Crush and don't bother me" is probably an exceptionally bad developmental idea.

Time spent engaging kids is time well spent I think. Whether it is reading books together or playing video games or throwing a baseball around, I have a hard time believing that type of interaction can ever be a bad thing.

I think the keyword here is like Dave mentioned, "together." If you play games together with your kids or not is probably what matters the most. But yeah too much of any one thing is almost always bad.

Some of my fondest memories are when I was playing soccer with my entire family or that motorcycle level on Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped. Only video game my parents ever tried. We were like those families on the TV commercials except without the creepy smiles and actually having fun.

My son plays quite a bit, he also reads a bit. My daughter plays a bit and reads an unreal amount, perhaps the two could have a better balance but over all I am not displeased with their choices. The only thing I did limit was the type of games they could play before a certain age. I didn't and don't really mind the amount of violence, after all TV is right there (and while I may control what they watch there is no guarantee their friends parents feel the same) but I was a bit more apprehensive about the more philosophical/religious aspects until i felt they were old enough to understand different viewpoints and have discussions with me about these, their mother raised them to be very religious and to be honest slightly intolerant, while I respected her wishes to a degree they both grew up to be inquisitive and open minded. Perhaps games helped this idea to question and to a certain extent challenge what they had taught to be "fact".

I will force my child through speed runs of old school games to train them. Then, I will make them play first person shooters until their fingers blister. They will become international sensations by the age of 12.

Logged

All right, we are going to use a fan brush here and uh why don't you take some hunter green and we are going to put a happy little bush right down over here in the corner there and that'll just be our little secret and if you tell anyone that that bush is there I will come to your house and I will cut you.